Bowman, N. D. (2012, April). Immoral, or distasteful? Audience fragmentation and media content. Panel presentation at Southern States Communication Association Annual Meeting, San Antonio.
Nicholas David Bowman, WVUNicholas David Bowman, [email protected]
@bowmanspartan@bowmanspartan
Immoral, or Distasteful? Audience fragmentation and media content
Overview
• Tastes and Media Preference• Cultural Proximity Hypothesis
– Culture as nationality– Culture as morality
• Early evidence for morality as predictor• Future Research
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Tastes and Media Preference
• Media content is produced to appeal to the “masses”– Gans (1954; 1979) taste cultures– Atkin (1984) learned expectations – Stam (1990) social identity– Zillmann (2000) morality subcultures
• Mass appeal usually requires an adherence to macro-level socio-cultural norms – Norm violations result in norm reinforcement (Klapper 1960;
data from Tamborini et al., 2010) – Production inline with dominant values (Mastro et al, 2012)
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Tastes and Media Preference
• Audience fragmentation has altered this process– Highest rated show? M*A*S*H, 1983 (125M)– Only five series since 2000 make the top 50, and only two
break 30M viewers– Renewed focus on “1000 True Fans”
• Increased focus on international markets– US media dominant (Hoskins, Mc Fayden & Finn, 1997)– more chance for audience ≠ content…– …but more chances for new audiences!
• Film: International Gross > Domestic Gross• YouTube (largely) spans national boundaries• Historically, we see “reverse media migration” (i.e. Beatles, reality TV)
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Cultural Proximity Hypothesis
• In general, we prefer “homegrown” content (cf. Straubhaar, 1991) as it tends to be close to our culture…
•…but what is culture?
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Culture as Nationality
• Culture is a function of socialization • Even cultures with similar “Western” or
“individual” dimensions vary– US (compared to Germany): Religion +, Welfare -,
Egalitarian -, Materialism +
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Culture as Morality
• Differences have roots in moral orientation– Hofstede (2011) “collectively-constructed minds”– Haidt et al (2004) examine the role of socialization
in making morality more or less salient– Tamborini (2010) discusses one’s “non-mediated
cultural environment”
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AuthorityLoyaltyPurity
Harm/CareFairness
Morality and Media Preference
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Tamborini (2010)
Morality and Media Preference
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Bowman et al, (2011)
Morality and Media Preference
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A) Sig. ∆ High vs. Low
B) Non-random(highest salience)
C) Random (lowest salience)
Digital Natives
German Adolescents
Yes (.002) Yes (21%) Yes (47%)
US Adolescents
No (.118) No (54%) Yes (41%)
Digital Immigrants
German Elderly
Yes (<.001) Yes (24%) No (77%)
US Elderly Yes (<.001) Yes (12%) Yes (39%)
Jöckel et al. (2011)
Morality and Media Preference
• Mastro et al. (2012; in press)– Compared English-language soap opera with
Spanish-language telenovelas– Significant patterns of content in line with
audience-specific cultural norms
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Soap Opera Telenovelas English Character Latino CharacterFairness/Reciprocity
ViolationsFairness/Reciprocity
AdherenceFairness/Reciprocity _ Authority/Respect +
Care/Harm + Fairness/Reciprocity + Villains: Older, upper-class
Villains: Younger, middle-class
Ingroup/Loyalty + Authority/Respect +
Purity/Sanctity +
Where do we go from here?
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• Traditional cultural proximity foci has looked at national media systems…
• …but the new mediascape might suggest other ways of “grouping” audiences
• Considerations into morality/moral portrayals key to understanding:
Immoral, or Distasteful?
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Thank you!
• In progress research, so for information:Nicholas David Bowman, Ph.D.Assistant Professor, Communication StudiesWest Virginia [email protected] @bowmanspartan
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